Category Archives: Literature and Culture

The Building Bridges initiative exists to support the growth and connectedness of a network of people and organizations working to eliminate structural racism and poverty in our county.

With that in mind, the Steering Committee has identified many local efforts that move us toward the elimination of structural racism and poverty. We also see that these efforts, although significant, are only a beginning. There is a huge amount of work still to be done.

If you know of steps towards eliminating structural racism and poverty that are not mentioned here, please share them (in informational and/or story form)

The Dorothy Cotton Institute is partnering with the Office of Human Rights to co-sponsor the Human Rights Arts Competition, open to all K-12 students in Tompkins County, whether in public school, private school, charter school, Montessori, or home-schooled.

Teachers and students are encouraged to explore the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to submit students’ artwork (visual, poetry or short film) expressing their understanding of one or more of the 30 articles of the UDHR . Click the link to find out details. The Dorothy Cotton Award will be presented by Ms. Cotton to the winning poet.

You’re invited to a reading and discussion this Thursday, July 25th at 7:00pm at 116 Ferris Place with Cornell Professor Helena Maria Viramontes. Viramontes is a professor of English at Cornell University. Her powerful writing is based in politics and is grounded in the sociological reality of working-class Latinas. She is the author of The Moths and Other Stories (1985), Under the Feet of Jesus (1995), and her most recent novel, Their Dogs Came with Them (2007).

Please join us at 6pm at 116 Ferris Place for a potluck before the discussion. The potluck and discussion are open to the public and we encourage people of all ages and backgrounds to attend.

The reading and discussion is hosted by the Solutionary Reading and Discussion Series, a project of Summer of Solutions Ithaca focusing on the union of arts and activism, direct education, and recentering environmental struggles around critical analyses of intersectionality. Summer of Solutions Ithaca is an eight week youth-led climate justice program exploring the social roots of the climate crisis and providing our generation with the knowledge and tools needed to weather the oncoming storm.

Summer of Solutions Ithaca is hosting two more major events this summer, and we hope to see you there:

Wednesday, July 31st 7pm – 9pm – Reading and Discussion with Professor Jolene Rickard, Chair of the American Indian Program at Cornell University to discuss Indigenous Issues and Visual Analysis.

Sunday, August 4th 12pm – 6pm – Anti-Oppression Training with Jenna Peters Golden of the Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance (AORTA), a national collective of educators striving to strengthen movements for social justice and the solidarity economy.

The Summer of Solutions Ithaca project is led and run by young people, ages 16-23. You can support program leader stipends and help us continue to provide high quality, free climate justice programming in Ithaca. Please consider donating here.